and Pitt reminded him of Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices.
When asked by some one, as he sauntered out of the house--'Is the House
up?' he replied; 'No, but Burke is.' The length of Burke's elaborate
spoken essays was proverbial, and obtained for him the name of the
'Dinner-bell.' Fox was talking one day at Brookes' of the advantageous
peace he had made with France, and that he had even induced that country
to give up the _gum_ trade to England. 'That, Charles,' quoth Selwyn,
sharply, 'I am not at all surprised at; for having drawn your _teeth_,
they would be d----d fools to quarrel with you about gums.' Fox was
often the object of his good-natured satire. As every one knows, his
boast was to be called 'The Man of the People,' though perhaps he cared
as little for the great unwashed as for the wealth and happiness of the
waiters at his clubs.' Every one knows, too, what a dissolute life he
led for many years. Selwyn's sleepiness was well known. He slept in the
House; he slept, after losing £8oo 'and with as many more before him,'
upon the gaming-table, with the dice-box 'stamped close to his ears;' he
slept, or half-slept, even in conversation, which he seems to have
caught by fits and starts. Thus it was that words he heard suggested
different senses, partly from being only dimly associated with the
subject on the _tapis_. So, when, they were talking around of the war,
and whether it should be a sea war or a Continent war, Selwyn woke up
just enough to say, 'I am for a sea war and a _Continent_ admiral.'
When Fox had ruined himself, and a subscription for him was talked of,
some one asked how they thought 'he would take it.'--'Take it,' cried
Selwyn, suddenly lighting up, 'why, _quarterly_ to be sure.'
His parliamentary career was then quite uneventful; but at the
dissolution in 1780, he found that his security at Gloucester was
threatened. He was not Whig enough for that constituency, and had
throughout supported the war with America. He offered himself, of
course, but was rejected with scorn, and forced to fly for a seat to
Ludgershall. Walpole writes to Lady Ossory: 'They' (the Gloucester
people) 'hanged him in effigy, and dressed up a figure of Mie-Mie' (his
adopted daughter), 'and pinned on its breast these words, alluding to
the gallows:--"This is what I told you you would come to!"' From
Gloucester he went to Ludgershall, where he was received by ringing of
bells and bonfires. 'Being driven out of my capital,' said he, 'and
coming into that country of turnips, where I was adored, I seemed to be
arrived in my Hanoverian dominions'--no bad hit at George II. For
Ludgershall he sat for many years, with Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, whose
'Memoirs' are better known than trusted, as colleague. That writer says
of Selwyn, that he was 'thoroughly well versed in our history, and
master of many curious as well as secret anecdotes, relative to the
houses of Stuart and Brunswick.'
Another _bon-mot_, not in connection with politics, is reported by
Walpole as incomparable.' Lord George Gordon asked him if the
Ludgershall electors would take him (Lord George) for Ludgershall,
adding, 'if you would recommend me, they would choose me, if I came from
the coast of Africa.'--'That is according to what part of the coast you
came from; they would certainly, if you came from the Guinea coast.'
'Now, Madam,' writes his friend, 'is not this true inspiration as well
as true wit? Had any one asked him in which of the four quarters of the
world Guinea is situated, could he have told?' Walpole did not perhaps
know master George thoroughly--he was neither so ignorant nor so
indifferent as he seemed. His manner got him the character of being
both; but he was a still fool that ran deep.
Though Selwyn did little with his two votes, he made them pay; and in
addition to the post in the Mint, got out of the party he supported
those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island of Barbadoes,
a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to
the Board of Works. The wits of White's added the title of
'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It is said that his
hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office
in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil List came
into operation; but this is not at all probable, as his dislike was
shown long before that period. Apropos of the Board of Works, Walpole
gives another anecdote. On one occasion, in 1780, Lord George Gordon had
been the only opponent on a division. Selwyn afterwards took him in his
carriage to White's. 'I have brought,' said he, 'the whole Opposition in
my coach, and I hope one coach will always hold them, if they mean to
take away the Board of Works.'
Undoubtedly, Selwyn's wit wanted the manner of the man to make it so
popular, for, as we read it, it is often rather mild. To string a list
of them together:--Lady Coventry showed him her new dress all covered
with spangles as large as shillings. 'Bless my soul,' said he, 'you'll
be change for a guinea.'
Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he was, had taken lodgings with Fitzpatrick
at an oilman's in Piccadilly. Every one pitied the landlord, who would
certainly be ruined. 'Not a bit of it,' quoth George; 'he'll have the
credit of keeping at his house the finest pickles in London.'
Sometimes there was a good touch of satire on his times. When 'High Life
Below Stairs' was first acted, Selwyn vowed he would go and see it, for
he was sick of low life above stairs; and when a waiter at his Club had
been convicted of felony, 'What a horrid idea,' said he, 'the man will
give of _us_ in Newgate!'
Dining with Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, he heard him say, in answer
to a question about musical instruments in the East, 'I believe I saw
one _lyre_ there.'--'Ay,' whispered the wit to his neighbour, 'and
there's one less since he left the country.' Bruce shared the
travellers' reputation of drawing the long-bow to a very considerable
extent.
Two of Selwyn's best _mots_ were about one of the Foley family, who were
so deeply in debt that they had 'to go to Texas,' or Boulogne, to escape
the money-lenders. 'That,' quoth Selwyn, 'is a _pass-over_ which will
not be much relished by the Jews.' And again, when it was said that they
would be able to cancel their father's old will by a new-found one, he
profanely indulged in a pun far too impious to be repeated in our day,
however it may have been relished in Selwyn's time.
A picture called 'The Daughter of Pharaoh' in which the Princess Royal
and her attendant ladies figured as the saver of Moses and her
handmaids, was being exhibited in 1782, at a house opposite Brookes',
and was to be the companion-piece to Copley's 'Death of Chatham.' George
said he could recommend a better companion, to wit--the 'Sons of
Pharaoh' at the opposite house. It is scarcely necessary to explain that
pharaoh or faro was the most popular game of hazard then played.
Walking one day with Lord Pembroke, and being besieged by a troop of
small chimney-climbers, begging--Selwyn, after bearing their importunity
very calmly for some time, suddenly turned round, and with the most
serious face thus addressed them--'I have often heard of the sovereignty
of the people; I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning,' We can
well imagine the effect of this sedate speech on the astonished
youngsters.
Pelham's truculency was well known. Walpole and his
friend went to the sale of his plate in 1755. 'Lord,' said the wit, 'how
many toads have been eaten off these plates!'
[Illustration: SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES THE "SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE."]
The jokes were not always very delicate. When, in the middle of the
summer of 1751, Lord North, who had been twice married before, espoused
the widow of the Earl of Rockingham, who was fearfully stout, Selwyn
suggested that she had been kept in ice for three days before the
wedding. So, too, when there was talk of another _embonpoint_ personage
going to America during the war, he remarked that she would make a
capital _breast_-work.
One of the few epigrams he ever wrote--if not the only one, of which
there is some doubt--was in the same spirit. It is on the discovery of a
pair of shoes in a certain lady's bed--
Well may Suspicion shake its head--
Well may Clorinda's spouse be jealous,
When the dear wanton takes to bed
Her very shoes--because they're fellows.
Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn's wit; and dozens more are
dispersed though Walpole's Letters. As Eliot Warburton remarks, they do
not give us a very high idea of the humour of the period; but two things
must be taken into consideration before we deprecate their author's
title to the dignity and reputation he enjoyed so abundantly among his
contemporaries; they are not necessarily the _best_ specimens that might
have been given, if more of his _mots_ had been preserved; and their
effect on his listeners depended more on the manner of delivery than on
the matter. That they were improvised and unpremeditated is another
important consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as
Warburton does, with the hebdomadal trash of 'Punch,' though perhaps
they would stand the comparison pretty well. It is one thing to force
wit with plenty of time to invent and meditate it--another to have so
much wit within you that you can bring it out on any occasion; one thing
to compose a good fancy for _money_--another to utter it only when it
flashes through the brain.
But it matters little what we in the present day may think of Selwyn's
wit, for conversation is spoiled by bottling, and should be drawn fresh
when wanted. Selwyn's companions--all men of wit, more or less, affirmed
him to be the most amusing man of his day, and that was all the part he
had to play. No real wit ever hopes to _talk_ for posterity; and written
wit is of a very different character to the more sparkling, if less
solid, creations of a moment.
We have seen Selwyn in many points of view, not all very creditable to
him; first, expelled from Oxford for blasphemy; next, a professed
gambler and the associate of men who led fashion in those days, it is
true, but then it was very bad fashion; then as a lover of hangmen, a
wit and a lounger. There is reason to believe that Selwyn, though less
openly reprobate than many of his associates, was, in his quiet way,
just as bad as any of them, if we except the Duke of Queensberry, his
intimate friend, or the disgusting 'Franciscans' of Medmenham Abbey, of
whom, though not the founder, nor even a member, he was, in a manner,
the suggester in his blasphemy.
But Selwyn's real character is only seen in profile in all these
accounts. He had at the bottom of such vice, to which his position, and
the fashion of the day introduced him, a far better heart than any of
his contemporaries, and in some respects a kind of simplicity which was
endearing. He was neither knave nor fool. He was not a voluptuary, like
his friend the duke; nor a continued drunkard, like many other 'fine
gentlemen' with whom he mixed; nor a cheat, though a gambler; nor a
sceptic, like his friend Walpole; nor a blasphemer, like the Medmenham
set, though he had once parodied profanely a sacred rite; nor was he
steeped in debt, as Fox was; nor does he appear to have been a practised
seducer, as too many of his acquaintance were. Not that these negative
qualities are to his praise; but if we look at the age and the society
around him, we must, at least, admit that Selwyn was not one of the
worst of that wicked set.
But the most pleasing point in the character of the old bachelor--for he
was _too much_ of a wit ever to marry--is his affection for
children--not his own. That is, not avowedly his own, for it was often
suspected that the little ones he took up so fondly bore some
relationship to him, and there can be little doubt that Selwyn, like
everybody else in that evil age, had his intrigues. He did not die in
his sins, and that is almost all we can say for him. He gave up gaming
in time, protesting that it was the bane of four much better
things--health, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, perhaps, he
cared little. Before his death he is said to have been a Christian,
which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set of his day. Walpole
answered, when asked if he was a Freemason, that he never had been
_anything_, and probably most of the men of the time would, if they had
had the honesty, have said the same. They were not atheists professedly,
but they neither believed in nor practised Christianity.
His love for children has been called one of his eccentricities. It
would be a hard name to give it if he had not been a club-lounger of his
day. I have sufficient faith in human nature to trust that two-thirds of
the men of this country have that most amiable eccentricity. But in
Selwyn it amounted to something more than in the ordinary paterfamilias:
it was almost a passion. He was almost motherly in his celibate
tenderness to the little ones to whom he took a fancy. This affection he
showed to several of the children, sons or daughters, of his friends;
but to two especially, Anne Coventry and Maria Fagniani.
The former was the daughter of the beautiful Maria Gunning, who became
Countess of Coventry. Nanny, as he called her, was four years old when
her mother died, and from that time he treated her almost as his own
child.
But Mie-Mie, as the little Italian was called, was far more favoured.
Whoever may have been the child's father, her mother was a rather
beautiful and very immoral woman, the wife of the Marchese Fagniani. She
seems to have desired to make the most for her daughter out of the
extraordinary rivalry of the two English 'gentlemen,' and they were
admirably taken in by her. Whatever the truth may have been, Selwyn's
love for children showed itself more strongly in this case than in any
other; and, oddly enough, it seems to have begun when the little girl
was at an age when children scarcely interest other men than their
fathers--in short, in infancy. Her parents allowed him to have the sole
charge of her at a very early age, when they returned to the Continent;
but in 1777, the marchioness, being then in Brussels, claimed her
daughter back again; though less, it seems, from any great anxiety on
the child's account, than because her husband's parents, in Milan,
objected to their grand-daughter being left in England; and also, not a
little, from fear of the voice of Mrs. Grundy. Selwyn seems to have used
all kinds of arguments to retain the child; and a long correspondence
took place, which the marchesa begins with, 'My very dear friend,' and
many affectionate expressions, and concludes with a haughty 'Sir,' and
her opinion that his conduct was 'devilish.' The affair was, therefore,
clearly a violent quarrel, and Selwyn was obliged at last to give up the
child. He had a carriage fitted up for her expressly for her journey;
made out for her a list of the best hotels on her route; sent his own
confidential man-servant with her, and treasured up among his 'relics'
the childish little notes, in a large scrawling hand, which Mie-Mie sent
him. Still more curious was it to see this complete man of the world,
this gambler for many years, this club-lounger, drinker, associate of
well-dressed blasphemers, of Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey, devoting,
not his money only, but his very time to this mere child, leaving town
in the height of the season for dull Matson, that she might have fresh
air; quitting his hot club-rooms, his nights spent at the piquet-table,
and the rattle of the dice, for the quiet, pleasant terraces of his
country-house, where he would hold the little innocent Mie-Mie by her
tiny hand, as she looked up into his shrivelled dissipated face;
quitting the interchange of wit, the society of the Townshends, the
Walpoles, the Williamses, the Edgecumbes; all the jovial, keen wisdom of
Gilly, and Dick, and Horace, and Charles, as they called one another,
for the meaningless prattle, the merry laughter of this half-English,
half-Italian child, It redeems Selwyn in our eyes, and it may have done
him real good: nay, he must have felt a keen refreshment in this change
from vice to innocence; and we understand the misery he expressed, when
the old bachelor's one little companion and only pure friend was taken
away from him. His love for the child was well known in London society;
and of it did Sheridan's friends take advantage, when they wanted to get
Selwyn out of Brookes', to prevent his black-balling the dramatist. The
anecdote is given in the next memoir.
In his later days Selwyn still haunted the clubs, hanging about, sleepy,
shrivelled, dilapidated in face and figure, yet still respected and
dreaded by the youngsters, as the 'celebrated Mr. Selwyn.' The wit's
disease--gout--carried him off at last, in 1791, at the age of
seventy-two.
He left a fortune which was not contemptible: £33,000 of it were to go
to Mie-Mie--by this time a young lady--and as the Duke of Queensberry,
at his death, left her no less than £150,000, Miss was by no means a bad
match for Lord Yarmouth.[6] See what a good thing it is to have three
papas, when two of them are rich! The duke made Lord Yarmouth his
residuary legatee, and between him and his wife divided nearly
half-a-million.
[6: Afterwards the well-known and dissolute Marquis of Hertford.]
Let us not forget in closing this sketch of George Selwyn's life, that,
gambler and reprobate as he was, he possessed some good traits, among
which his love of children appears in shining colours.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.
Sheridan a Dunce.--Boyish Dreams of Literary Fame.--Sheridan in Love.--A
Nest of Nightingales.--The 'Maid of Bath.'--Captivated by Genius.--
Sheridan's Elopement with 'Cecilia.'--His Duel with Captain Matthews.--
Standards of Ridicule.--Painful Family Estrangements.--Enters Drury Lane.
--Success of the Famous 'School for Scandal.'--Opinions of Sheridan and
his Influence.--The Literary Club.--Anecdote of Garrick's Admittance.--
Origin of the 'Rejected Addresses.'--New Flights.--Political Ambition.--
The Gaming Mania.--Almacks'.--Brookes'.--Black-balled.--Two Versions of
the Election Trick.--St. Stephen's Won.--Vocal Difficulties.--Leads a
Double Life.--Pitt's Vulgar Attack.--Sheridan's Happy Retort.--Grattan's
Quip.--Sheridan's Sallies.--The Trial at Warren Hastings.--Wonderful
Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence.--The Supreme Effort.--The Star
Culminates.--Native Taste for Swindling.--A Shrewd but Graceless
Oxonian.--Duns Outwitted.--The Lawyer Jockeyed.--Adventures with
Bailiffs.--Sheridan's Powers of Persuasion.--House of Commons Greek.--
Curious Mimicry.--The Royal Boon Company.--Street Frolics at Night.--An
Old Tale.--'All's well that ends well.'--The Fray in St. Giles.'--
Unopened Letters.--An Odd Incident.--Reckless Extravagance.--Sporting
Ambition.--Like Father like Son.--A Severe and Witty Rebuke.--
Intemperance.--Convivial Excesses of a Past Day.--Worth wins at last.--
Bitter Pangs.--The Scythe of Death.--Sheridan's Second Wife.--Debts of
Honour.--Drury Lane Burnt.--The Owner's Serenity.--Misfortunes never come
Singly.--The Whitbread Quarrel.--Ruined.--Undone and almost Forsaken.--
The Dead Man Arrested.--The Stories fixed on Sheridan.--Extempore Wit and
Inveterate Talkers.
Poor Sheridan! gambler, spendthrift, debtor, as thou wert, what is it
that shakes from our hand the stone we would fling at thee? Almost, we
must confess it, thy very faults; at least those qualities which seem to
have been thy glory and thy ruin: which brought thee into temptation; to
which, hadst thou been less brilliant, less bountiful, thou hadst never
been drawn. What is it that disarms us when we review thy life, and
wrings from us a tear when we should utter a reproach? Thy punishment;
that bitter, miserable end; that long battling with poverty, debt,
disease, all brought on by thyself; that abandonment in the hour of
need, more bitter than them all; that awakening to the terrible truth of
the hollowness of man and rottenness of the world!--surely this is
enough: surely we may hope that a pardon followed. But now let us view
thee in thy upward flight the genius, the wit, the monarch of mind.
This great man, this wonderful genius, this eloquent senator, this most
applauded dramatist was--hear it, oh, ye boys! and fling it triumphantly
in the faces of your pedagogues--Sheridan, at your age, was a dunce!
This was the more extraordinary, inasmuch as his father, mother, and
grandfather were all celebrated for their quick mental powers. The last,
in fact, Dr. Sheridan, was a successful and eminent schoolmaster, the
intimate friend of Dean Swift, and an author. He was an Irish man and a
wit, and would seem to have been a Jacobite to boot, for he was deprived
of a chaplaincy he held under Government, for preaching, on King
George's birthday, a sermon having for its text 'Sufficient for the day
is the evil thereof.'
Sheridan's mother, again--an eccentric, extraordinary woman--wrote
novels and plays; among the latter 'The Discovery,' which Garrick said
was 'one of the best comedies he ever read;' and Sheridan's father, Tom
Sheridan, was famous, in connection with the stage where he was so long
the rival of David Garrick.
Born of such parents, in September, 1751, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was
sent in due course to Harrow, where that famous old pedant, Dr. Parr,
was at that time one of the masters. The Doctor has himself described
the lazy boy, in whose face he discovered the latent genius, and whom he
attempted to inspire with a love of Greek verbs and Latin verses, by
making him ashamed of his ignorance. But Richard preferred English
verses and no verbs, and the Doctor failed. He did not, even at that
period, cultivate elocution, of which his father was so good a master;
though Dr. Parr remembered one of his sisters, on a visit to Harrow,
reciting, in accordance with her father's teaching, the well-known
lines--
'_None_ but the brave,
None but the _brave_,
None _but_ the brave deserve the fair.
But the real mind of the boy who would not be a scholar showed itself
early enough. He had only just left Harrow, when he began to display his
literary abilities. He had formed at school the intimate acquaintance of
Halhed, afterwards a distinguished Indianist, a man of like tastes with
himself; he had translated with him some of the poems of Theocritus. The
two boys had revelled together in boyish dreams of literary fame--ah,
those boyish dreams! so often our noblest--so seldom realized. So often,
alas! the aspirations to which we can look back as our purest and best,
and which make us bitterly regret that they were but dreams. And now,
when young Halhed went to Oxford, and young Sheridan to join his family
at Bath, they continued these ambitious projects for a time, and laid
out their fancy at full usury over many a work destined never to see the
fingers of the printer's devil. Among these was a farce, or rather
burlesque, which shows immense promise, and which, oddly enough,
resembles in its cast the famous 'Critic,' which followed it later. It
was called 'Jupiter,' and turned chiefly on the story of Ixion--
'Embracing cloud, Ixion like,'
the lover of Juno, who caught a cold instead of the Queen of Heaven; and
who, according to the classical legend, tortured for ever on a wheel,
was in this production to be condemned for ever to trundle the machine
of a 'needy knife-grinder,' amid a grand musical chorus of 'razors,
scissors, and penknives to grind!' This piece was amusing enough, and
clever enough, though it betrayed repeatedly the youthfulness of its
authors; but less so their next attempt, a weekly periodical, to be
called 'Hernan's Miscellany,' of which Sheridan wrote, or was to write,
pretty nearly the whole. None but the first number was ever completed,
and perhaps we need not regret that no more followed it; but it is
touching to see these two young men, both feeling their powers,
confident in them, and sunning their halcyon's wings in the happy belief
that they were those of the eagle, longing eagerly, earnestly, for the
few poor guineas that they hoped from their work. Halhed, indeed, wrote
diligently, but his colleague was not true to the contract, and though
the hope of gold stimulated him--for he was poor enough--from time to
time to a great effort, he was always 'beginning,' and never completing.